Key Takeaways
- Elon Musk said on Saturday that he expects a lot of stranded compute in partially complete data centers.
- That risk falls on neoclouds like CoreWeave and Nebius, which bought GPUs ahead of the buildings to run them, and NVIDIA’s CEO says a scarcity of capital is already slowing their buildouts.
- CoreWeave paid $1.2 billion of net interest in 2025 against an operating loss of $46 million, so it has no profit to absorb a stalled site.
- CoreWeave’s Nov. 12 report will show whether its active power is catching up with the 4.2 gigawatts it has contracted.
CoreWeave (CRWV) has lost more than a third of its value in October as its bonds slid on debt fears. Now Elon Musk has given shareholders one more thing to worry about.
Hyperbolic co-founder Yuchen Jin posted on X what he’d heard from a “neolab friend” who locked in GPU capacity early: “H100/B200/B300 rental prices have since gone up 2–3x. We can just resell the compute and print money.”
Musk’s reply on Saturday: “I think we’re going to see a lot of stranded compute in partially complete data centers.”
That’s a problem for anyone who bought the chips before the building was ready.
A GPU in a half-built site earns nothing, while the debt that paid for it keeps costing interest. That risk sits with neoclouds like CoreWeave and Nebius (NBIS), which bought capacity ahead of the buildings to run it.
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Every piece has to show up
Musk explained why in another reply the same day. He was answering a post that listed what limits power for data centers: land, permits, grid access, transformers and switchgear, even large lathes for turning shafts.
“If anything is missing, however seemingly trivial, the compute doesn’t work,” he wrote.
Some of those chips are already waiting. On Friday’s episode of Peter Diamandis’s Moonshots podcast, Link Ventures founder Dave Blundin said “there’s 15 gigawatts of chips sitting idle because they can’t find data centers that are powered with liquid cooling.” (He still thinks chips will be the bigger bottleneck once the next wave of construction is done.)
CoreWeave’s interest bill doesn’t wait
CoreWeave borrowed heavily to build its fleet of NVIDIA (NVDA) GPUs. Its total debt on TIKR, which includes lease liabilities, went from $2 billion at the end of 2023 to $29.8 billion at the end of 2025…
…and reached $51.6 billion by June 30, 2026, including $16.5 billion of leases.
The business doesn’t earn enough to cover the interest on that debt. In 2025, CoreWeave paid $1.2 billion of net interest against an operating loss of $46 million.
The gap has grown since then. Interest was $640 million in the second quarter of 2026 alone, against a $49 million operating loss, and management guides $860 million to $940 million for the third quarter.
Unfinished sites are already costing money. CoreWeave capitalized $176 million of interest on capacity still being built in the first half of 2026. And delays have hurt it before: in November 2025, one data-center developer’s delays forced it to cut its 2025 revenue guidance.
Paying for the rest is getting harder, too. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC last week that a “scarcity of capital” is hampering neocloud buildouts.
Nebius is spending fast too
CoreWeave isn’t the only neocloud building ahead. Nebius’s capital spending went from $82.9 million in 2023 to $808 million in 2024 and $4.07 billion in 2025.
None of that spending earns anything until the sites it’s going into are powered and cooled.
Higher prices only pay on plugged-in chips
Rental prices are helping the compute that’s running. CoreWeave raised prices about 25% across GPU types in July, and Jin’s friend puts H100, B200 and B300 rentals up 2x to 3x.
But a higher price pays nothing on a GPU that’s waiting for a transformer. On Oct. 21, a post on X called SpaceX’s demand for compute bullish for neoclouds. Musk replied: “Only if they can get their compute online and reliable, which is extremely difficult to do at scale.”
Analysts don’t expect CoreWeave’s operating income to cover its interest until 2028, when consensus has EBIT of $8.8 billion against $7.7 billion of interest. A stalled site only pushes that further out.
The upshot
Musk is right that some compute will be stranded. CoreWeave, with an interest bill bigger than its operating income, is the one carrying that risk. Its customers had committed $104.2 billion of backlog as of June 30. But it had only 1.5 gigawatts of active power then, against 4.2 gigawatts contracted as of Aug. 11, and its first self-built site doesn’t come online until later this year. Most of that gap depends on other companies finishing their buildings on time.
My take: I’d wait for proof that CoreWeave’s active power is catching up with its contracts before buying the stock.
Of course, the Nov. 12 third-quarter report could supply that proof. Management guides adjusted operating income of $200 million to $260 million against that interest bill, and more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end.
So what is CoreWeave stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
